Opinion – Page 213 – Savior Gaming

Phantasy Star 4 Retro Review

Phantasy Star 4 is one of those nostalgia games i’d love to see get another release, but largely be untouched like in previous collections it was in for the PS3 and XB360. The game mostly takes place on the planet of Motavia in the Algol star system, but you did travel to multiple satellites and planets. The turn-based battle system offered lot of strategy with spells and skills that could combine to create entirely new abilities. The story itself was pretty standard for its time, a group of people who meet under various circumstances must save the solar system, with the main character, Chaz, being revealed to be the chosen one. The art style was great, with cut scenes playing out in a comic storyboard manner.

I have played through this game more than a few times over the years, and I have to say it holds up extremely well. The controls still feel nice, the story still fun and the combat still engaging. Any RPG fan should absolutely try it out. As usual, may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Shining

“I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in.”

Probably one of the best quotes from this classic movie. I my not always enjoy Stanley Kubrick movies but this one for me will go down in history as one of the best movies of all time. The concept is simple from Stephen King, take a family, toss them in an isolated hotel, mix in a kids special abilities and watch the horror ensue. Jack Nicholson plays his part perfectly as a normal ex teacher working as a writer that seems to be a bit off before becoming full blown bat shit crazy. Shelley Duvall completely nails being the conservative house wife doing her duty by taking care of their son and following her husband lovingly to this hotel for 5 months before turning into the scared lil woman that eventually clubs her husband with a baseball bat defending her equally creepy as hell son played by Danny lloyd. Seriously this kid makes me happy I have daughters.

From the very opening job interview to Jack chasing his family around with an ax this movie is great, and for once the movie was far better than the book. As always thanks for joining me and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 Games of Disappointment

dissappointment valley

Every so often we all will look forward to a game and board the hype train full steam ahead, or at least read a bit about it. Sometimes those games either suck, or just were not what we thought they would be. These are five games this happened to me with, in no particular order.

For Honor

for honor

For Honor is one of those games that had a pretty great concept and nice graphics. It is quite simple, take control of a barbarian,samurai or knight and kill everyone in your path. The controls make that pretty easy to do, however the game itself makes it hard to find or stay in a multiplayer game to the point that many quick playing entirely.

Final Fantasy 13

final fantasy 13

Final Fantasy 13 was on of those games that for me NEEDED to be good to renew my faith in a franchise after a horrible experience with its predecessor. From the looks of it, this was going to do it. Beautiful graphics, plenty of characters, a new world with a rich backstory and so much more. So i’m outside my local Game stop smoking anxiously awaiting my copy. I rush home, crack open a beer and the disappointment hits me almost immediately. The linear paths, the horrible characters and that god awful battle system. It would be another 7 years or so before my faith in Final Fantasy can even begin to be rebuilt with FF15.

Final Fantasy Advance

final fantasy advance.jpg

Let me start by saying i LOVED final fantasy tactics for the PlayStation 1. To say I was stoked for this game would be an understatement. In fact it is totally possible this is the biggest offender on the list. The first one was a story of a war torn land with amazing characters and interesting battles. This dumpster fire involved killing people by odd and random laws and children. By all means, skip this game.

Dark Souls

dark souls

I heard a ton of great things about this one, such as solid graphics, fun combat and an insane difficulty. Well the graphics for its time were solid, everything else I quickly found to be bullshit. the difficulty comes from broken combat and one of the worst camera systems I have ever encountered. Mot of my deaths involved the camera being stuck causing unscene enemies and my weapon legitimately passing through an enemy but causing no damage. Thankfully later iterations fixed these issues.

Alien Isolation

alien isolation

I knew very little about this game until after its release. A friend of mine talked it up for being a great stealth game that had a pretty good scare factor. I was a bit skeptical but this trusted friend even went so far to buy it for me while it was on sale ( Hey TorstenV how you doing) Now maybe he over hyped it, but almost everything about this game was just bad for me. The graphics of this game weren’t bad, but the game play was slow even for a stealth game, the story was pretty meh and worst of all the game didn’t even scare me. I think a major issue was you had to be a huge fan of the movie series to truly appreciate this game.

Leatherface trailer review

Howdy ho, friends, Torsten V returns from a much needed vacation. Coming back from vacation, I returned to the much anticipated first trailer to the latest installment of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. This is the story of legendary slasher Leatherface as a teenager and what I’m going to assume is another Leatherface origin story. So first things first, I feel like I have to wonder if this part of the original timeline or a new series of films upcoming. I personally didn’t mind the remake and its prequel, in fact I actually like the more serious, darker tone. But with 2013’s Texas Chainsaw 3-D, that swept back into the original time line and frankly dissolve the series into a hot shitty mess. It;s a interesting question to ask. I liked a lot of the imagery of the trailer, including the fresh look of the mask but I wish there was a little more story in the trailer, just to get an idea where the hell it is in the timeline. Good to be back, and may the gaming gods be with you.

RPG Maker,Creating Dungeons

Map019

Creating dungeons is quite a bit different than creating a town. Thankfully there is more than one way to do so. The game allows you to pick the walls and floor and it will randomly generate dungeon which obviously makes it quite a bit easier. You simply ass a few things and it done, which is what I have done in the above picture. The other option, and the better option for any serious game maker, is to design the map from scratch. There are various tiles sets you an use to do this from floors and walls to statues and rugs.

Another thing to remember is where in the game you a placing it. A huge sprawling dungeon at the very beginning probably is not in the best interest of whoever is going to be playing your game, but a single room also would be pretty much boring. Also keep in mind you do have to create the monster for your dungeon and decide how strong you need/want them to be. Just remember to have fun, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Havenhurst (2016)

Havenhurst has a pretty interesting concept. An apartment building in New York is run by an old woman that only rents to people that are attempting to better themselves after miscellaneous poor life choices such as drug addiction, prostitution or alcoholism. If you go back to your self destructive ways you are evicted, and in true horror fashion someone viciously kills you before you ever actually move out. For example a woman returns to prostitution and well dies shortly after you see her ample chest bounce around with some money on the table. The movie itself can be creepy at times but outside of the core idea the movie itself fails to really follow through and capture how great the idea actually is. I won’t say this movie was bad, just not my cup of tea. Thanks for coming and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

George A Romero

Now some of you may have noticed, while the name of the blog is Savior Gaming, we cover a LOT of horror movies. A large part of this comes from as a kid one day my father that died recently from cancer says to me hey savior ( hey you weren’t there he could have called me savior) lets watch a movie. This turned out to be my first horror movie, Night of The Living Dead.

Now being from Scranton Pennsylvania it was filmed pretty close to home, so it holds many special places in my heart. Romero had many great movies, but this one will always stick with me. May he rest in peace, and may the gaming gods watch over him.

American Poltergeist 2

So here we are. Another American poltergeist movie. Let me start out by saying the concept behind this one is not as good as the 1st one which weirdly came out after this one. Yes, poltergeist 2 was actually released prior to 1 and the movies are in no way connected. It was also called The Poltergeist of Borley Forest. Tho knowing all this does explain why the video work and acting seems to be done by a bunch of students, I would like to think no professional would change the name of their movie after release and make it seem like a Sequal to a movie that released a few years afterwards. All that being said the story of a spirit following a teenage girl home after she walks under a noose in a haunted forest at a keg party is rather interesting and the movie itself is not bad. If you don’t mind what appears to be an indy film under bad management definitely check it out. Thanks for your time and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

From The Dark (2014l

Every so often picking horror movies off Netflix completely and utterly bites me on the ass and I stumble across a movie so bad I feel like it will never end. This is one of those god forsaken movies I never should have watched. A couple on a trip in the middle of nowhere in the country of Ireland gets stuck in some mud and attempts to find help. What they find is an old country home with a man in need of help. Now everything about this has potential,especially if you happen to enjoy Irish lore and scenery. Sadly what it ends up being is a badly shot movie that some parts are so dark you can’t really see whats going on, even if it was just someone washing their hands. The acting itself feels stiff and the creature hunting them all night is not at all believable as a creature and seems to simply be some guy that’s a bit crazy. I truly can not recommend anyone watch this movie. Thanks for reading and may the gaming gods guide you to glory.

Viral (2016)

So i picked this movie randomly off Netflix, like I do most of my horror movies. For once I have to say this worked out in my favor. The story goes like this. A family has just moved to town, dad is a biology teacher at the local school his daughters attend as usual. Mom is out of town for whatever work related reason and as you already knew I am sure, one sister is more party hard than the other and one is the typical girl next door that happens to have a crush on the boy across the street.

As usual in these movies the typical high school things happen that leads to a best friend being dead at the hands of whatever is killing everyone, this time its parasitic worms that have suddenly started turning people into what can only be described as mindless drones to feed the before mentioned worms.

Despite all the usual suspects and cliches in the movie it was actually very well done. The pacing and acting were both done fairly great , the sounds were right where they should have been and the visuals were down right creepy and wiggly at times. My biggest issue with the movie is the cliffhanger ending with no real reason to suspect a follow up. As always thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.